


"Do they collide?" I ask, and you smile

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: Star Trek: Reboot
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Lovers to Friends, M/M, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 11:37:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2190249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five snapshots of Jim and Bones's relationship at the academy, and one thirty years later --  a reboot of the famous "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpxRS8GORmk">camping scene</a>" from Star Trek V.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Do they collide?" I ask, and you smile

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** The very last section is Kirk/Spock. I'm very sorry. It just happened  
>  Thanks very much to [](http://impishtubist.livejournal.com/profile)[**impishtubist**](http://impishtubist.livejournal.com/) for [educating me on the Perseids.](http://impishtubist.livejournal.com/29232.html#cutid1) I would never have realized that the meteor shower that inspired this fic had a name if not for you!  
>  Title from the song "[Passenger Seat](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er1CKieAtUI)" which I'm pretty sure was written for this fic.

_He's almost thirty. The kid pressed up against him like there's nowhere else he's rather be isn't even six months off his twenty-third birthday. At times he feels like there's whole galaxies between them. Tonight he thinks if he reached up he could touch the stars but he's not gonna do that cuz it'd mean letting go of him, and in this moment he thinks nothin' could ever make him let go._

***

“ _Wow,_ ” Jim breathed. “This is _unbelievable._ ”

The wonder in the kid’s voice was genuine and Bones felt his lips turn up. He pulled the blanket a little tighter around them and leaned his cheek against Jim’s head.

“Oh shit! Did you see that one?”

He did. Just a little up and left of the moon, a streak of light had burned its way across the sky, had seared a path so bright across the black it looked as though the sky had been slit open, a hot knife through butter, letting the light of Heaven blaze through for just a moment before being swallowed again by the void.

There weren’t any stars over Iowa. Jim had told him. With the city to the north and the mines to the south, they’d been polluted out of the sky long before even his parents were born. And then when the shipyard went up, forget it. You were lucky to see the moon anymore.

“It’s so strange,” Jim’s voice thrummed against his ear, nestled in his hair. “Growing up, it was impossible to get into all that talk about _flying among the stars_ and _exploring the vast regions of space_ because there just…wasn’t. Any of that. Stars, space… _whoa_ …Did you see that? It was like the earth was just floating in this foggy haze, like you could _see_ the atmosphere, and space was just so other. So unreachable. Completely separate. But like this…” Jim freed a hand from their shared blanket and stretched it up, up into the chilly air, stirring the Milky Way with his fingers. “Like this, you can understand why man fought so hard against gravity, all these years.”

  
  
***

  
 _They're five minutes off the shuttle and all McCoy wants is his next drink. The kid at his side had sucked down half his flask like it was water and handed it back with a smirk. He wants to shake this Kirk kid off. Wants to be alone. Wants to crawl into a bottle and hide from those magnetic blue eyes that are refusing to let him go._

“Stars? What are those?” Kirk grinned at his new friend, squinting in the sunlight.

“The hell are you from?” the doctor-from-Georgia asked him skeptically.

“Little town in Iowa, Riverside. Yeah, the place by the shipyards. Hasn't been night there since they started building that new piece of junk for the 'fleet. Fuckin' work lights on all hours of the day and night. Rumor is she's gonna be Pike's."

"Pike?"

McCoy asked, spying a bar across the street, not looking back to see if Kirk was following him.

"Yeah. You know. Guy who just signed your life away for you?"

"I know who Pike is." That drink had better be cold and it better be ready when they walked in the door. "Just didn't know it was his ship."

" _Enterprise_? Oh yeah." Kirk sighed "Yeah, she stole the night sky from us pretty good."

“Irony in action,” McCoy grumbled, opening the door to the bar.

  
***

_He doesn't really know what he's doing. He doesn't let himself think about it. He doesn't think Jim will like it, but he doesn't think about that either. It's the Perseids. He hasn't missed them since he was a kid in Peach Tree, GA. There's few things a man can count on in life, so an annual miracle ought not be overlooked. He figured. He gets Jim to agree and prays that sharing this with Jim isn't the stupidest decision he's made since deciding to let Jim draw him into his orbit in the first place._  


McCoy rented a groundcar to take them up north, to a campground he’d heard of, far from anywhere.

“You drive?” Jim asked as he slid into the passenger seat.

Bones thumbed the ignition, not bothering to answer. Jim put the window halfway down and chuckled at his silence.

“Guess I just imagined you going about your rounds on horseback or something. Dr McCoy, riding the Peach Tree med circuit.”

Bones cast an exasperated look his way, accidentally smiling. “Never did have a horse of my own,” he admitted, speeding them out of the city. “Not that my daughter didn’t try her best to change that.”

“Does Jo ride?”

“Her auntie Louise takes her out to the family ranch every summer. Comes back sunburned with broken bones every time.” Bones sighed, gazing into the distance.

“Hey,” Jim said softly, reaching across the consol between them to take the hand that was clenched on his knee. “We should go with her sometime. I’ve never ridden a horse.”

Bones snorted, squeezing his hand. “And you never will, Jim-boy. Those horses’ll ride _you_ outta the pasture.”

“Then maybe I’ll just ride you,” Jim smirked, raising their twined fingers to his lips.

Bones snorted again, a smirk tugging at his lips that didn’t quite match the affection in his eyes as he glanced towards the passenger seat. “You’d have to rope and tie me, cowboy. This stallion ain’t ready to be broke.”

“There are too many things I could say to that, so I’m not even going to try.” Jim settled back in his seat, a smile playing about his lips as the wind played with his hair.

They rode in silence up the coast, watching the familiar scenery fade away.

“So,” Jim said after awhile, hiking one foot up on his seat and turning to face Bones, “remind me again why we’re driving two hours to look at some stars?”

“Meteors,” Bones corrected."The best show you'll ever see in your life. Shower'll peak around one in the A.M., but we'd never see 'em anywhere near San Francisco.”

“Couldn’t we have sat in the planetarium where there’d be heat and comfy chairs and a soothing voice with a laser pointer to tell us what we’re looking at?”

“As your physician I can’t allow you to go any longer without a decent glimpse of the Heavens, Jim. It’s unhealthy.”

“The ‘Heavens’?” Jim asked, brows twisting, skeptical. Bones didn’t reply. He didn't know how to talk to Jim, not about stuff like this. Important stuff. Jim sighed and released his hand. He sunk down farther in his seat, picking at a jagged nail and looking out the window.

  
***

_He's running on three hours of sleep and five cups of coffee. Second year at the Academy was kicking his ass, no denying it. He's sore deep past his muscles, down to his bones. Deeper. His soul is sinking. And Jim's not helping. Making a bigger fuss over his 24th than his own daughter did about her 10th. Bones rubs his aching eyes and thinks that stars are meant to be seen racing across Heaven's playing field, not blipped on map and weighed down with data to be turned into an analysis and signed off on come final exams._

Jim walked into McCoy’s room without knocking, toed off his boots and flopped down on the doctor’s bed.

“I’ve had a shitty day and I can’t deal with anything else so we’re staying in.” He announced as he wriggled himself down into the blankets and lifted his head slightly, putting on his extra-sexy-smirk. “I’m all yours, Bones.”

McCoy hadn’t looked up when Jim entered and didn’t look up now. His head was bent over a PADD with his consol on in front of him and three hard-bound books open on his desk.

Jim sighed and raised himself on his elbows. “Bones?”

Marking his place with a finger, McCoy at last glanced at him. “Thought you were going out tonight?”

“Was. But I ran into Gary Fucking Mitchell in the lab and he talked at me for a half-hour and I’m ready to punch someone. So you’re stuck with me. Whatcha doin’?”

Bones held up his _Stellar Cartography_ textbook in answer.

“Oh. Need help?”

“No.”

“You sure?” Jim pushed off the bed, walking around McCoy and draping himself over his shoulders, reading off the PADD in his hand. “’The dynamic gas motions in M42 are complex, but are trending out through the opening in the bay and toward the Earth.’ Wow. That sounds _fascinating_ , Bones. Maybe I’ll just leave you alone with that, cuz I don’t know how I’m gonna compete with _Orion gas_.” He dropped a kiss against McCoy’s neck, fingers tickling gently down his ribs.

“Jim,” McCoy sighed, trying to shrug him off. “I’m really busy. I thought you were going out tonight.”

“I _was_ ,” Jim pulled back, exasperated. “And now I’m not. You know that analysis isn’t due till next week, right? Chill out a little.”

“Yeah, but I’m on-call all weekend since Dr. Puri’s out of town and I’ve got tests to grade by Tuesday and somewhere in there I’d like to sleep.” McCoy shot a covert look over his shoulder to where Kirk was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.

“So you _are_ working this weekend?” Jim's voice was tight.

“Yes, Jim,” Bones said, spreading his arms. “I’m working this weekend. What was I supposed to say to him, 'I'm sorry about your family emergency but I can’t cover for you cuz it’s my boyfriend’s birthday?’ I’m not sure that’d fly, Jim-boy. I’m a doctor, and you’re just--”

“You’re _a_ doctor,” Jim spat, “not _the_ doctor. Jesus, Bones, there are like 200 med students in this dorm alone who could’ve covered for him.”

“Maybe, but he asked _me_!”

Jim flung his arms wide, letting them fall against his thighs with angry slaps. They glared at each other across the narrow distance, guilt and accusation flying between them until Jim, sighing in disgust, shook his head and shoved away from the wall. Pausing once more at McCoy’s side, he reached down and flicked through the starmaps displayed on his PADD, calling up one that was sickeningly familiar.

“Hm,” he said softly, finger tapping a point between stars that should have been no more significant that any other empty blip of space. “Happy birthday to me.”

Before McCoy could respond Jim strode from the room, hands fisted angrily at his sides.

As the door closed McCoy looked down at map showing the final resting place of the _USS Kelvin._ And the doctor, who rarely let anything more colorful than a _dammit, Jim,_ cross his lips, exhaled on a quiet “ _fuck me.”  
_

***

 _He's warm, but he demands more contact anyway. He's safe, but he clutches the calloused fingers tighter. He's sleepy, but he stays awake just to hear that voice in his ear._ Ok, love. _Always_ love, _never_ I love you. _Jim is ok with that for now._  
  
The fire smoldered down to ashes, the pot licked clean of Bones’s bourbon and beans, the half-empty bottle winked beckoningly in the firelight. Bones had borrowed a tent but it seemed ridiculous to hide beneath it now, not when the meteors were still shooting across their vision and Jim was generating enough body heat for the two of them.

“How can you be cold, you’re like a radiator,” Bones grumbled, drawing him closer anyway.

“Am I making you hot?” he heard Jim’s muffled reply and rolled his eyes, burying his nose in the hair that curled at the nape of Jim’s neck.

After a minute Jim rolled onto his back, resting his head on one arm and gazing upwards. “So about that ‘heavens’ thing you said..."

Bones stiffened slightly. “It’s just a saying. It just means ‘sky.’”

“No, I know that.” Jim paused, his tone almost hesitant. “I like that you say it.”

Bones felt his heart skip ahead of his brain but said nothing.

“I want to come back here sometime. I hear this place has good climbing.”

“Oh yeah? Know what else I'll bet it has? Good falling.”

Jim laughed. “You’ll just have to come with me, then.”

“Why? Expecting me to catch you?”

“Nah.”

Jim fell silent. If Bones wanted an answer, he was going to have to ask for it. “Why, then?”

Jim shrugged horizontally, eyes going wide as two meteors made their spectacular appearances, the second just tripping on the heels of the first. “If you’re with me I’ll be ok, cuz I’m pretty sure I’m going to die alone. Like my dad.”

McCoy raised himself up on one elbow, staring hard at Jim’s serene face.

“That’s why I ditched the car, when I was twelve. With that cop after me I wasn’t alone, so it wasn’t right.” Jim sighed, whiskey and nostalgia fogging Bones's senses as he watched a little half-smile twitch across Jim's lips. “Sorry, that was kind of a downer, wasn’t it?”

Bones leaned in and kissed him. Jim ran the backs of his knuckles against Bones’s cheek, his other hand coming up to curl around the doctor’s hip. When Bones broke away and lay back down beside him, Jim sighed and closed his eyes.

“Let’s definitely do this again sometime.”

“Ok, love." Bones pulled Jim tight against him and murmured the words right into his ear, not trusting them to travel any distance between them.

Jim smiled, looking up at the stars.  


***  
  
 _Thirty years later--Yosemite National Park_

“You know you two could drive a man to drink.” Bones says with tired glares at the couple sitting across the fire from each other.

“Me?” Jim has the gall to look surprised. “What did I do?”

“You? You really piss me off, Jim.” The words come out thick and Georgia-dark and the whiskey has made it pretty plain he’s speaking the truth. “Human life is far too precious to risk on crazy stunts. Maybe it didn’t cross that macho mind of yours, but you shoulda been killed when you fell off that mountain.”

“It crossed my mind,” Jim murmurs into his tin cup, draining the contents as though trying to keep up with Bones. The whole scene seems indecently familiar.

“And?” Bones asks, unable to help himself.

“And,” Jim draws the word out into two syllables, “you of all people should have known, Bones,” he flicks a glance at his Vulcan, “that it wasn’t my moment. I plan to die alone.”

The look they share over the sparking embers is brief, but to the point. At one time it would have meant something more than it did now, some kind of promise, or bargain. Tonight Bones thinks it means simply, _I remember._

Bones doesn’t look at Spock as he pushes beans around the bottom of his bowl with his Starfleet-issue titanium spork, appetite gone. “Well, I’ll call Valhalla and reserve a room for you,” he says.

“Valhalla,” Jim repeats with a quiet chuckle. “That your heaven of the year, McCoy?”

He’s drifting towards sleep on whiskey and campfire smoke when he hears the Vulcan’s clipped voice.

“Captain.”

Bones’s eyes are closed but he rolls them anyway.

From his other side Jim says softly, “Spock, we’re on leave.”

“Jim,” Spock concedes, and for the twentieth time that day Bones regrets agreeing to this. Time was, Jim would never have let something as trivial as a third wheel keep him from his lover. But there they are, sleeping on separate pads, a goddamn campfire in between them. And how Jim managed to drag his ass halfway up El Capitan Bones’ll never know, cuz right now, gazing at him through half-closed eyes, Bones sees him as he is—a tired old man. They’re all getting old.

Except, of course, for the pointy-eared bastard to his left. “Jim,” he says. “Life…is not a dream.”

There’s a pause and Bones struggles valiantly against the urge to groan, letting his eyes fall shut and praying for oblivion.

“Go to sleep, Spock.”

“Yes Jim. Good night, beloved.”

Another pause as Jim is probably glancing toward the old doctor, making sure he’s asleep. “I love you too, Spock. Good night.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my long-lost LJ in 2009


End file.
